The One with the Free Weekend

Italy is such a beautiful city and every region is like being in a completely different country. North, Central and South Italy have different cuisines (like I mentioned in my previous post), different Italian slang and even different culture. Studying abroad in Rome is not enough to explore all the beautiful nook & crannies Italy has to offer. However, you can enjoy some of it during the free weekends. If you don’t want to stay in Italy you can visit any part of Europe as well since it’s so easy and inexpensive to travel.

For the first weekend, we went to Florence as a group since is part of our study abroad agenda. However, for the second and third weekends we are able to choose wherever we want to travel. Therefore, my friends and I decided to visit to the Amalfi Coast. Our bus was initially scheduled to leave Rome at 8:00 PM, but it changed to 11:00 PM. Therefore, we arrived in Sorrento at 4:00 AM to wake up at 7:00 AM to leave to Capri. We were so tired, but the vibrant colors of the island, the fresh breeze from the sea and the smell of lemon through our hike made it all worth it. (Plus, we slept one hour on the boat). We spent an hour on a boat around Capri, where we saw the Blue Grotto, the Capri rocks and much more. We hike all the way to the top, where we had an amazing view of the island. All of it was breathtaking (literally). On Saturday, we went to Positano and spent the whole day relaxing at the beach. The water wasn’t as shallow as I expected, so when we were taking our fabulous touristy pictures I was freaking out since I don’t know how to swim. (Yes, I’m from Puerto Rico and I don’t know how to swim). On our last day, we visit the ruins in Pompeii and ate amazing pizza.

For the third weekend, some of us stayed in Rome to explore the city a little bit more on our own, because with classes is difficult to do everything at once. During my free weekend in Rome I went shopping, and explore the Trastevere area a little bit more; there I encountered a restaurant called Grazie & Graziella. This restaurant is a must during your visit in Rome; the food was delicious and the service even better. Other places you can visit during your free weekends in Italy can be Cinque Terre, Venice, Milan, Naples, Verona, and Sicily. Outside of Italy you can go to Austria, Croatia, Malta, Spain, France and many others. With Fridays off, you can leave Thursday afternoon and come back Sunday at night, that way you can enjoy the most out of your travels.